How effective were two handed axes against plate armor compared

>>34119514

It can break bones, or club the person in the head and fuck them up that way.

If long enough, people will hook the ankle and trip, smash the person in the face.

how the fuck would we know, this is an anime imageboard, not beowulf's longhouse

>>34120321
I've told you a thousand times, Swegli, this is a great hall not a longhouse!

>>34120321
Yeah, the weapons section.

>>34119514

There weren't actually categories of weapons like that in real life. How do you define a two-handed axe? How is it different from a poleaxe? Is it just what people called them? Because in that case there really wasn't a weapon called a 'two-handed axe'. There was the Dane axe (which came into and fell out of use before plate armor was really a thing) and there was the poleaxe (which was a dedicated anti-armor polearm), but neither was ever called a two-handed axe specifically. There was also the lochaber axe, but that was technically a halberd without the top spike. But of course looking at it like that, a halberd is just a long axe in the first place.

File: motu_heman_pose_04.jpg (117KB, 1000x1333px) Image search: [Google]

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>>34120391

>>34119514
No OP, war axes are usually very thing, and short, and one handed, more akin to a sharp hammer than anything, either that, or they were part of what was essentially a pole-arm. Even the Danish bearded axes would be used more like a halberd than a woodcutting axe, particularly in a martial context.

Also the most effective weapon against solid plate armor is a knife, so you can stab them in the not-plates

>>34120391
Let me rephrase it then, would an axe head be effective against plate armor with a heavy enough force behind it, or would it really just damage the axehead without doing as much damage as a sword/dagger to find chinks in armor, the point of a halbred or spear, or a hammer for a direct hit?

>>34120699

It's always going to depend on the axe and the armor in question, but by and large no hand-held weapon really did much damage to plate armor. A lance might penetrate a breastplate, for example, but not much else is going to do the job. Even polearms (specifically designed to use against armor by armored men) didn't actually do much damage to the armor itself. The primary way to kill an armored man was to get him to the ground and have your buddies stab through gaps in the armor. Thus why knightly polearms have all the little fiddly bits, for hooking/tripping opponents. Wrestling aids more than weapons, most of the time.

Now, it's possible for a heavy enough weapon swung hard enough at just the right angle to dent a helmet sufficiently to brain a person. Or you could stave in their ribs by hammering the breastplate. But those things are very hard to do against a moving, fighting opponent. Again, best done when they're on the ground. Most of the time all you're going to do is bruise.

So I suppose to tl;dr things down, the answer would be 'it's possible for an axe to damage armor, but it's not likely'.

Just use a gun faggit! They had black powder back then.

>>34120422
>fantasyshit
>>34120699
axes used in combat generally aren't heavy for good reason
using an edge against plate is a retarded idea regardless

>>34119514
No handheld weapon except a lance in a charge can be expected to defeat plate armor by main force.

You kill a man in plate by stabbing him in the gaps or by wrestling him to the ground and cutting the traces that hold some of his armor on, so you can stab him in the throat, etc.

Swords were the best at this in single combat and probably the best overall, but halberds, pollaxes, and similar all occasionally had situational advantages.

>>34119514

Like chopping an armored tree.

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>>34121527
>No handheld weapon except a lance in a charge can be expected to defeat plate armor by main force.

literally the reason the war hammer was invented

>>34121614
It still won't pierce tempered plate. You can knock someone's head around and you can split maille, and you can fuck up the joints of plate armor, but every test where people actually achieve useful penetration involves securing the armor piece to be tested to an immovable object, instead of using a weighted dummy.

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Poleaxe was developed particularly for knightly duels
Axe part was less useful, more often the pointy spear bits and the hammer or spike head were used

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4aMoCAypos#t=38m50s

>>34119514
>>34120699
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ob95SxIpw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLgKrkr2_Pw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Ylrr-y0rc

>>34121723
>It still won't pierce
>every test where people actually achieve useful penetration involves securing the armor piece to be tested to an immovable object, instead of using a weighted dummy.

So you don't know because nobody does - it hasn't been tested. Also, they would have to test with the pick end, not the hammer end, just so we're on the same page.

>>34121723
Not all plate was tempered and plates on some parts of extremities and back were really thin, 1 mm was not uncommon. Of course ability to pierce mail still matters in the age of plate too as gaps were protected by mail.

>>34121882
There have been several tests of Bec du Corbin on tempered plate on dummy torsos, they don't get penetration, even with the spike.

On non-tempered plate, they sometimes get a bit of penetration, but nothing that would penetrate the padding underneath, and then they generally bind, so you wouldn't want that anyways.

>>34121916
>Of course ability to pierce mail still matters in the age of plate too as gaps were protected by mail.
Exactly.

They are good at attacking the seams where the armor is weaker.

>>34121723
the hammer is not supposed to pierce the plate. it works through trauma. blunt force trauma. if you get hit on the helmet with one of those hammers you are going to get fucked up

>>34120621
Honestly, anything really sharp and pointy is bad news to anyone in plate armor, ie., arrows.

>>34119514
Triggered: how would you remove that sword effectively?

>>34123601
yeah thats why nobody wore it.

>>34122189
I've heard in some poleaxe training videos that the spikes are meant for penetration once the opponent is knocked down, which is akin to having the test where armor was fixed in place. Of course, if they're standing up there's no way you can get through, but that's what the hammer and grappling are for.

>>34123676
I've always wondered this about swords worn on the back.

>>34125991
>the spikes are meant for penetration once the opponent is knocked down
Yes, because the spikes are used on the gaps in the armor, not on the plate itself.

No handheld weapons defeated plate unless the plate was extremely cheap and weak. There is a reason why plate was used even when firearms became a thing, and the term bulletproof was used to prove how strong a plate was.

Spikes on the warhammer were ment for pene blows to the side of the HELMET. Lighter men at arms carried them.

K don't know shit.

>>34121793
Do you know much about these fights? How is a person determined to be "killed"? Are there any rules? It seems like a lot of hitting on the head. I tried to find a regulation list or something but the only sites I found weren't in English.

Thanks in advance.